Africa (except North Africa)

COTONOU, May 9 (NNN-Xinhua) — Benin’s Minister of the Interior Sacca Lafia on Saturday warned of a destabilizing plan as a serious threat to the integrity of the country.

Lafia sounded the alarm in a statement here in the economic capital Cotonou, citing the seizures of batches of ammunitions in Benin as well as in neighboring Togo.

He recalled that on April 30, Benin’s police seized a batch of 70,000 cartridges of 12 mm calibre on board a vehicle.

(Reuters) --- A landslide at an artisanal gold mine has killed at least 15 people in northeastern Guinea, the government said on Sunday.

The disaster took place on Saturday in remote Siguiri province, 800 km (500 miles) from the capital Conakry. The zone holds some of the West African country’s largest gold reserves.

In a statement the government said it had launched an investigation.

JOHANNESBURG, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Eleven cases of COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7 and four of B.1.617.2 variants have been detected in South Africa, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Saturday night.

According to Mkhize, the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa confirmed four cases of the B.1.617.2 variant, which was first detected in India, have been detected in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and all the person had a recent history of travelling from India.

N’DJAMENA, Chad (AP) — At the small hospital where Dr. Oumaima Djarma works in Chad’s capital, there are no debates over which coronavirus vaccine is the best.

There are simply no vaccines at all.

Not even for the doctors and nurses like her, who care for COVID-19 patients in Chad, one of the least-developed nations in the world where about one third of the country is engulfed by the Sahara desert.

KAYA, Burkina Faso (AP) — In the more than 15 years Salomon Tibiri has been offering spiritual succor as a military pastor in Burkina Faso, he’s never fielded so many calls from anxious soldiers and their relatives as in recent years, when the army found itself under attack by Islamic extremist fighters.

“Before the crisis there was more stability,” Tibiri said, seated in a military camp church in the city of Kaya, in the hard-hit Center-North region. “Now (the soldiers) are busier, and when you approach them you feel their stress — much more stress.”

MOGADISHU, May 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Somalia on Thursday announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Kenya after mediation by Qatar, state media said.

Somalia cut ties with Kenya in Dec 15, 2020 after accusing Nairobi of interference in its internal affairs.

MOGADISHU, May 7 (Xinhua) -- More than 250,000 people have been displaced in the past two weeks in violence and generalized insecurity in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and its environs, the United Nations humanitarian agency has said.

The displacement took place in Banadir, Berdale and Badweyn, including nearly 200,000 in Mogadishu, in Banadir region, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

KAMPALA, May 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Ugandan Government through a ‘special waiver’ will allow over 4,000 people including 21 heads of state to attend President Yoweri Museveni’s 6th swearing-in ceremony on May 12.

The gathering of 4,042 people at the same function, is a break away from the government’s own 200-people maximum standard operating procedure (SOPs) instituted by Museveni himself for all public gatherings in a bid to combat the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

(Reuters) --- The Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday declared the end of an Ebola outbreak that infected 12 people in the eastern province of North Kivu and killed six of them.

The outbreak was contained using Merck's (MRK.N) Ebola vaccine, which was given to more than 1,600 of the patients' contacts and contacts of contacts, the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said.

ABUJA, May 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A notorious gang leader behind the abduction of more than 300 students in Nigeria in December has been killed by a rival gang, officials say.

Auwalu Daudawa was reportedly ambushed while attempting to steal a herd of cattle from an armed group in the north-western state of Zamfara.

Daudawa is said to have carried out December’s kidnapping in Katsina state.

He was given an amnesty as part of a peace deal in February but reportedly returned to his gang earlier this week.